Solar on a small TT
I'm looking at a small travel trailer (starcraft satellite 17rb) which is only about 20ft long. Roof is composite one piece without much of a flat area. One thing that I absolutely want on my next R...
Forum Discussion
pianotuna wrote:
Hi brulaz,
At 6000 watts of storage there may be four 12 volt jars--so I'd jump to 48 volts. My gut feeling is that there are more devices at 48 volts than at 24.
IIRC 2oldman went from 12 to 24, and found it less than pleasing so has jumped to 48 volts.
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Was never exactly sure why 2Oldman went up to 48V, but since he was upgrading pretty much everything, including his batteries to LiFePO4, it made sense. You can double your system wattage but still use the existing wiring by doubling the system Voltage.
And with more cars going to 48V start/stop systems, I suspect that 48V will be the wave of the future in solar systems.
But when I converted, the 24V stuff was cheaper and more was available. All the way from little things like USB port converters that can work on anything from 12V to 32V, upto 12-24V solar chargers and inverters.
But there were some other practical reasons that were more important to me:
- 4 relatively new GC2s and no room for more unless I completely replaced them with AGMs or a LiFePO4 battery bank inside the trailer. Because of the $$ that was not going to happen.
- Three 72 cell panels (690W) currently wired in parallel and no room for another 72 cell panel AFAIK on the roof. My MPPT only goes up to 100V, so I couldn't rewire all three in series.
- the Kisae 24V 2000W inverter was being sold off at a discount.
But yes, starting from scratch with a high powered system, 48V would be the way to go.
